Medical Spa Groups On LinkedIn & Facebook: How Do You Use Them?

March 24, 2012 Medical Spa MD

Medical Spa MD has a professional group on LinkedIn, a Facebook page, and Twitter account as well as a number of other affiliated groups... but how should you be using them?

As a new Medical Spa MD Members receive a number of automated emails after you join. One in the series lets you know about our groups including these:

I got this email from one of our new members.

How do we best use these groups? How can I use them to my advantage?

Good question. Here's how.

The Medical Spa MD community does not exist exclusively on this site. In fact, there are different areas that are divided by function and we use some other sites for very specific functions.

MedicalSpaMD.com is really the heart of the community and has all of the content including the free deals for Members, forums, jobs, classified ads and the rest. It also has some built in anonymity to protect individuals and allow physicians to communicate directly to the community without having to worry about backlash for expressing their opinion. This is extremely valuable and this trade-off is the only way that this kind of content can be voiced. However, it comes with some costs. There have been cases where unscrupulous individuals have acted as shills to pimp specific technologies and services. We try to mitigate this but it does happen. (When we find someone doing this we generally publish the entire episode which is why you never want to even try this.)

How to use the Medical Spa MD site

The first thing that you absolutely want to do is to join Medical Spa MD as a Member. If you're not a Member you don't have access to any of the free deals and you're not on our mailing list so you won't be notified when we have webinars on marketing or clinic operations, release the next Physician Report, or be able to access the members only areas of the site. (Membership is free and we don't sell or rent our list to anyone since we hate spam too.)

Get Started: Almost all new Members start by lurking, but you probably already have a nagging question that someone has the answer for if you'd just ask. We have a really active community and if you have a question; What It's almost guaranteed that someone here has the answer. Just ask. You'll be surprised what kind of information you can get or connections you can make simply by asking the question.

If you have the answer to a question or just have thoughts on a subject, you'll be equally well served by answering a question or engaging in a discussion that interests you. There are many 'regulars' who are know to the community and are listened to since they regularly contribute. The technology and service companies who regularly visit the site to see what's going on also know who the regulars are and I've been told (by more than one) that they get preferential treatment since they have a voice and a following that makes them more valuable than a physician or clinic operating on their own.

As with most things in life, you get out what you put in. If you're just a taker you're still welcome, but if you give freely you'll find that good things come to you. (The money-makers are the action-takers.)

But of course MedicalSpaMD.com is not the only place we live.

How to use the Medical Spa MD LinkedIn Group

The Medical Spa MD LinkedIn Group is an entirely different animal were every individual is identified (along with their entire network). This creates a very different environment where you can connect directly with someone in the community.

The LinkedIn group is a fantastic resource if you're; looking for someone based on geography (like when you're looking to find or fill a job) or you're looking for someone who has very specific knowledge... which is where it differs from this site. LinkedIn is not really focused on content or information, it's really about making one-to-one connections with individuals. Of course you can do that on this site as well but on LinkedIn you can see an individuals professional resume and bio.

(The issues we have on LinkedIn are that the sales guys are constantly trying to infiltrate the group and spam Members. We try to prevent this by manually approving every application so that you're not just inundated with endless spam and solicitations and we regularly kick out those who are abusing the group. While this results in a smaller group, we think that the trade offs are clearly worth keeping it as usable as possible.)

Get Started: LinkedIn is a public, professional network so the first thing you'll want to do on LinkedIn is to make sure that your profile is put together correctly and shows your professional side to best advantage. I'll put together some info on how to do this and post it later since there are some definite Do's and Don'ts with LinkedIn but there are a couple of things that you'll want to make sure your profile includes to be ready to be seen including:

A photo of you smiling: There are a surprising number of people that obviously don't understand how LinkedIn is used and either don't upload a photo, or use a photo that is obviously not them. Unprofessional and you'll never be taken seriously. No photo and you're trying to connect? You'll be hit with the spam button.
A well written background: I see a lot of profiles since we have up to twenty people joining every day and we take a look at each one of them. If you have just one entry it looks like you're hiding your background (and some people do) and you'll probably get declined.
Recommendations: LinkedIn makes it easy to ask for and give recommendations for people you've worked with. Use it if you can since it's a good marker to indicate that you're someone who others enjoy working with.

As an 'identity based' network, the Medical Spa MD LinkedIn Group has some benefits that just aren't available elsewhere which is why we use it as part of our community.

Also: if you're a physician you should also take a look at Freelance MD and the Freelance MD LinkedIn Group which is our community for around physician lifestyle, income and freedom outside of clinical practice.

How To Get With Medical Spa MD On Facebook

Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are somewhat different animals since they really are 'social' networks and only tangentially used for serious business connections but that doesn't meant that you should ignore or discount them. Twitter, YouTube and especially Facebook are the primary networks where you'll be connecting with your businesses 'consumer audience' of patients and potential patients. These are the networks where your business will be seen and connected to so it's important that you learn how to use and benefit from the opportunities that these networks offer. Everyone may already be on Facebook but that doesn't mean that they're using it correctly or the the best effect.

The Medical Spa MD Facebook page is not really one of our core community sites but it still has 2,500 likes. How many does your Facebook fan page have?

Get Started: Make sure that you like the Medical Spa MD Facebook page as well as Physicians + Facebook Marketing: How To Do It Correctly! The 'Facebook Marketing' page is where we teach physicians (and others) how to use Facebook as a business and details a number of behind the scene activities and how-tos like fan-gates, deals and auto webinars. We also use some content from Frontdesk Marketing since that's focused specifically on marketing for medical spas and cosmetic practices.

Facebook is a network that you'll want to learn to use in conjunction with your website to connect with your consumer network, not necessarily your professional one.

How To Use Medical Spa MD On Twitter

Twitter is really broken into a couple of camps; hardcore users who seem to tweet constantly, automated tweets that are used to link back to other posts and updates (your blog or Facebook page for example), the occasional user, and dead accounts.

Here's Medical Spa MD Twitter

As a clinic you'll probably want to use it by at least hooking it up to your LinkedIn profile and Facebook page even if you don't have a blog (which you should have) but you won't want to focus on it as a primary source of networking for two reasons; Twitter is not as interactive and connected as Facebook and LinkedIn so it's more difficult to build any real relationship, and your target audiences aren't spending as much time on it as in other networks. That's not to say that Twitter doesn't have it's place and it's not useful, just that it's a supporting pillar and not your main focus.

How To Connect Medical Spa MD With Your Own Site

You can also identify yourself and/or your clinic as a Member on your own website or blog with a Medical Spa MD site badge.

You'll have to be a Member to access these members only badges but you can see some examples of members identifying themselves as Medspa MD Members here:

You can find the member badges to put on your site here.

If you really love us and are somewhat technical you can use our RSS feed and connect that with your site to update your site automatically with content.